Harbor

About a week ago I sent my son to kindergarten. It was his first day in a big school. His first time to meet school teachers and kids he doesn't know. To see playgrounds, gyms and libraries. To eat lunches and snacks all by himself. It was very overwhelming. The next day, I sent his teacher a letter. 

I just want to be happy

It's crazy how accurate a reflection this is of my life. Especially the zipper part. 




Thanks Mario for the LOLZ.

Beauty is in the arms

It's hard to write when you're constantly self-editing yourself. It can become crippling. And for the past few months, that's how I've felt. But you know, you forgive yourself and you move on. And I want to move on.

So let's start with beauty.

This Christmas, dress appropriately.

Welcome to the December #TrailingSpouseStories blog crawl!

This December, we talk about the much anticipated and somehow dreaded, ultra sentimental Christmas holidays. How were the Christmas holidays outside your home country?  How is it similar and different?  What did you enjoy most spending Christmas abroad?

Find out how we spend our holidays and how it feels to spend it in different corners of the globe, so don't forget to read more stories of fellow trailing spouses at the end of this blogpost.

This was the year we were supposed to have a snowy white Christmas. This was the year we were supposed to be away from family for the first time in our lives. Well, maybe not the first time. At least for one of us.

I wasn’t excited at the prospect of freezing my body’s extremities or being huddled around a decorative non-functioning electric fireplace or having to shovel snow off the car. And most definitely not excited to be the one to dress the kids everyday in 3 to 4 layers of clothing every time we need to step out the door.

The fire is broken.

Night owls don't dance.

Every night I look at the clock and think I should be in bed right now sleeping. But of course I don't. There's something I'm refusing to let go of. I dunno. The dark. The silence. The void. The couch all to myself and whatever's left in the fridge. I dunno what it is. Some part of me.

I wrote a whole paragraph trying to figure it out and deleted all the nonsense. Only one sentence remained. And I couldn't stop my eyes. Because I knew it was true.

Good night little boys

Nathan Reich Sings, The Dream Song

All we bring we leave behind.

Welcome to the inaugural run of the #TrailingSpouseStories blog crawl hosted by Tala Ocampo and Didi of D for Delicious.  

This November we talk about our First Voyage as trailing spouses and what we’ve brought with us, rather: what’s in your suitcase? 

Please see the end of the post for other #TrailingSpouseStories.

When we left the Philippines to start a new life in another country, we left many things behind. Clothes were given away. Toys were given away. Furniture was sold. Our car was sold. We said goodbye to Miyagi. Although I’m still holding out hope he can join us here someday.

Miyagi, stealer of fried chicken.

At the Intersection of Crazy

This year has been and continues to be the strangest of my life. Everything changed. I’m having to relearn how to do things I normally know how to do. Like driving for instance. Imagine moving from a country where you had the most minimum, the barest and not to mention the shadiest of laws to one where laws pretty much dictate every move you make. Thank you Sting.

U-Turns, for example, a very handy driving maneuver, especially when lost or you know, just change your mind and decide to head in the opposite direction, it happens you know, because people change their minds all the time... are against the law. IN ANY SCENARIO. There will never be a time or place in this country when making a U-Turn is acceptable.

My mind just...

Beginners, beginnings and apologies.

Normally I'd just wank off, but what the hell, let's do something different.

Oh sire! You grace us with your presence!
(Your best english accent is required here. Disney english)

You ever been around your kids so much that you forget how to talk to adults? Or how to have an adult conversation? And I already suck at small talk, so my social skills is now at level beginner. I'd have better luck striking up a conversation with your child.

I always thought Peppa Pig was kind of a brat, but she gets away with it cuz she's a bit charming. For a pig. Your thoughts?

How to draw a blank.

I am a SAHD boy.

You know, there really should be a study about how stay-at-home dads (SAHD) are perceived in society. Like, what happens when I'm only one of two dads at a school function and the rest are moms? Are they judging me? Are they talking behind my back? Are they judging my wife for not being here? And the most important question of all, do they think they're better than me? Do other dads think they're better than me for going to work instead of staying home and taking care of the kids? Wouldn't you like to know?

Let's get outta here.

Wes Anderson // Vehicles from Jaume R. Lloret on Vimeo.

Compass Kaput

Did somebody say bananas?

It’s a popular line on my son’s favorite tv show, The FreshBeats Band. Watches it all the time so you can imagine, I’ve memorized all their songs. And it’s driving me bananas. Cue music.

These past months have been frantic to say the least. I haven’t had time to absorb what it means to uproot our lives and move to a new country. I’ve just been treading water. Occasionally drowning and resuscitated repeatedly by my wife, who is way better at handling change than I am.

And who I am is being rewritten every day that I am here. Almost like becoming a whole new person. This is my problem right here. What happens if I don’t like who I’m becoming?

I was perfectly fine with the person that I was. I knew him. I liked him. He made me laugh. He had really good taste in music. But the me now? I’m dancing and going bananas.

I was talking with my wife the other day, trying to explain to her what exactly is going on with me. Because I’m going crazy. And not in the fun way crazy can be. Crazy is coming out of me in ways that are hurtful and mean. And some days, I really, really hate myself for doing these hurtful and mean things. I tell myself, it’s not who I am. And yet. It’s coming out of my mouth. Emotions exploding like a neutron bomb. Scaring everyone and scaring myself most of all.

I told her, I’ve got a case of lizard brain where my grey matter is operating on a reptilian level. Just surviving. Just moving from one task to the next. Everyday, over and over again. The same lonely and brainless tasks. Like Groundhog Day. Except less funny.

I’m getting pretty good at folding clothes. And I can do some minimal cooking so we can stop going through Mcdonald’s Drive-Thru. And no more microwave dinners. Vegetables have been reintroduced into our diet and I no longer fear the oven. Or the stove-top. Or pretty much anything in the kitchen. Fingers intact!

Being a mother is hard. Jesus Christ it’s hard. It’s made me feel really, really stupid. You know how guys hate stopping the car to ask for directions? We hate it. We super duper hate it. We’d rather drive lost for another hour than stop the car and roll down the window. It hurts our pride. It reveals us to be unsure of ourselves. It’s admitting we made a mistake. And everyone in the car is counting on us to get us there. And we have no answers, just a delusional internal compass that has finally gone kaput.

This is my everyday for the last 6 months. And my cup is empty.

But maybe, the good thing with being completely empty, you get to start from scratch.

Hi. It’s the new me.

Yaya, who moved my cheese?

This post is sponsored by Marca Piña & Tonkita by Arix.

Our family has uprooted itself from the warmth and safety of Manila and moved to Twilight country. 

MWAH!

Continental Shift

Just mourning the life I once knew. You live with each other so long, you get used to them just being there. Took a lot of things for granted. Took everything for granted. Felt like I was sleepwalking and now just waking up. 

Break-ups do that. There's always a point after a break-up when you second guess your decision. Because you miss the other person or are suddenly reacquainted with the feeling of being alone. And it kinda terrifies you. 

A Thousand Floodgates Opened

This post is sponsored by HP Ink Advantage

Man, my kid just said one of the worst things I’ve heard in the time I’ve been a dad.

“Papa, take away your phone.”

I fucking died.

What's in a picture?

This post is sponsored by The Picture Company.

My wife and I are a couple of saps. We get teary-eyed at the drop of a hat. It’s one of the first things we learned about each other and one of the first things we bonded over. I can’t remember what we were crying about that first time, but I’m quite sure it was something as ridiculous as this.

Big kids playing with little children

I'd never given much thought to the typical kiddie birthday party. You buy some balloons, hire a clown, eat some cake, open some presents, then you go home. Party over. Simple and sweet. But also kind of expected. My wife, who in a former life was a wedding coordinator, has introduced me to the idea that a party, whether it be for a wedding or for a kids' birthday, is not just a party. It can be so much more.

It can be an experience. It can be imaginative, surprising, and even (gasp) fun. It can make you forget about the rough week you had at work. It can make you not mind that chocolate stain on your nice shirt because your taste buds are doing somersaults and high fives. It can make you feel like a kid again.

This might be the best thing you can do today.

This post is sponsored by Philips.

Facebook gets people riled up. They move one icon slightly to the left and the whole internet is up in arms. We gotta set this town ablaze! We gotta write strongly worded status messages that we hope will get hundreds of likes and comments and, and, and, MAKE THEM CHANGE IT BACK.

Cuz dammit that icon belongs on the right.

But that’s not really the point. What I’m interested in is people. People gettin’ riled up. This is an emotional town filled with lots of emotional people. It’s who we are. And I think it’s fantastic. I think it’s powerful. I think it can get people to do things they wouldn’t normally do.

Like fight. Or march. Or forgive. Or laugh. (yes, some people don’t normally laugh, let’s just hug them.) We share and post a lot of things that make us feel.

This is what I have been seeing on my feeds of late. We feel angry. We feel injustice. We feel the inequality of the few VS the many. And unfortunately sometimes, we feel hopeless.

Everyday is the end of the world

This post is sponsored by Walnut Shoes.

One of the things that happen when you become a father is that you remember what it was like being a child. Some people though remain children throughout their adult life but we’re not gonna go there. Let’s just hug them.

Everyday that I’m with my boys, I try to see the world from their perspective, if not from their height. As adults, we live in the big world. With every person we meet, every friend we make, every new place we visit or country we travel to, we continue to stretch our world and make it bigger.

Heart failure

This post is sponsored by Philips Avent.

A few weeks ago my wife and I had a fight. It was our anniversary that day. Ouch, I know. 5 years of marriage and 2 kids later, it seemed like we had stopped moving forward. It’s more complicated than that of course. Marriage is a complicated beast. And most of the time, at least in our case, the things that complicate it are the things that are left unsaid.